CeCe is a cropped cardi knit bottom up, with a 9 stitch lace repeat. I had put this down many months ago and was trying to find my place. I am realizing that I have made a mistake, though.

You are increasing sts between 2 of the lace panels as you go along, and I think you are supposed to be knitting those in lace. However, you start out with only a couple of stitches, and so I didn't use the lace chart there. It looks ok at the bottom but when getting to the top there is a wide swath of stockinette (under the armpits on the body, and up the inside on the sleeve) that could have been lace. The pattern says "Maintain lace pattern throughout by keeping YOs and decreases in balance - work a YO only if you can also work its matching decrease, and vice versa." (It says that AFTER all the instructions for the body, so I don't know if I missed it before, or just misunderstood, or what.

Looking at it now, it looks weird, though. I am debating on how much of a perfectionist I am. Do I want to rip out the entire thing and start over (I really like CeCe and I do want to finish it). Do I leave the body as is, and rip the sleeve and make 2 sleeves doing the lace correctly? Or do I just go with it and hope since the stockinette is under the arms it won't be so noticeable?

IF I decide to do the lace pattern on the increased stitches, how do you start if you have 2 sts and a 9 st repeat? Start with the beginning? End? Middle of the repeat? I think I didn't know what to do, so I didn't do anything.

I can't post a pic right now, but this project is demonstrating my mistake. The other projects seem to have lace everywhere, although not a lot of the photos show the underarm area very well.

With lace, though, you have yo's and dec to consider. So what you have to do is only do a dec if you have a yo to balance it and vice versa, so you'd just work the stitches in question as stockinette.

Also, you can use a yo without a corresponding dec and use that as your increase on that row if it works out to do so.

I find that it's easy to work the increases at the end of the rows, because you're continuing in pattern and just adding one at the end.

However, when you have to increase at the beginning of the row, you have to count back from the first stitch of your first full repeat to see where you need to start the pattern. After a while, though, you can see it. Once you get enough stitches for a full repeat, you start the process over again.

Don't worry if you 'mess up' on a row or two with adding a yo or making a dec. As long as the pattern lines up, you can compensate later and add or not add a stitch to end up with the right number.